Posts Tagged ‘Men (Race)’

Well, my new adventures as Annatar, Lord of Gifts haven’t gotten off to the promising start I was hoping for when I invented the “new me.” But I can’t give up — the road goes ever on and on. Hey, that might make a good song.

I took on my new, more pleasing form; and fashioning myself a hefty walking staff from a limb donated by Young Man Willow, I took off for Lindon. I was hoping to not have to walk the whole way — indeed, I considered assuming my true form and flying — but I figured if I’m going to relate to these Children of Ilúvatar, I had better learn to live like them.

So it was walk, walk, walk. I kept an eye out for horses, those gangling beasts that Men rode into battle against Melkor — a preposterous mode of transportation, but better than all this walking. No luck. Apparently, horses are not sylvan creatures.

Every once in a while I came across a settlement of Men — usually mud huts, or tiny villages on stilts out on bogs. These Men wear their hair in dreadlocks, sport leather skirts and paint their faces blue. They must be the dumbest beings I have ever encountered. Seriously, I have traded wittier banter with cave trolls.

The largest Mannish settlement I visited was called Brehyll, a village of about 20 huts located along an old east-west Dwarf road. Its occupants survive by grinding acorns into pancakes and selling watery beer to passing Dwarves. They didn’t know what to make of me — they called me a “wizard” and asked me to make it rain. This was trivial, so I did — and they went ballistic, declaring I must be an agent of their beloved god, Manwë Súlimo.

You would have been proud of me — I didn’t overreact too much, and I hardly killed anybody. It seems these Men used to worship Melkor, but had recently come into contact with some Elves living to the north, who had taught them to worship the Dickless– I mean Manwë.

So I apologized profusely, and asked how to find these Elves. They sounded like they might be the kind of people who could use my advice. And maybe, eventually, after seeing how much I was doing for them and how little the Valar were willing to contribute, these Elves might turn their worship to Melkor, or better yet to me.

They lived in a place called Lake Evendim, in the north of Eriador. It was cooler there, and there were fewer trees, which was all the better to me. It turned out to be a mixed settlement of a few hundred Noldor, Sindar, and Green-elves. For some reason they had splintered off from Lindon, under the leadership of a Sinda called Celeborn and a blonde-haired Noldo named Galadriel.

Galadriel. She is going to be a problem.

I mean, this guy Celeborn, he’s friendly, charismatic, fun to hang out with, and dumb as a bag of Orcs. If the other Sindarin Elves are as gullible — I mean trusting, I won’t have many problems. But his wife…

First, the positive. She’s hot. Really smoking hot. Hey, I’m not going to go there — I still think it’s basically bestiality, a Maia and an Elf — but I can appreciate that she is very attractive. Were Melkor to return from the Outer Dark and I to go back to my former ways, I could totally see raping her to death.

What? That’s totally a compliment.

But the negatives far outweigh the golden hair lit by the sun, the skin like a gossamer cloud, and the great rack. She’s the niece of Fëanor, the guy who made Melkor’s shiny rocks; which means she’s pretty much the most powerful Noldo left in Middle-earth (although she is not High Queen of the Noldor — note to self: look into this.) She is much smarter than her dimwitted husband, and appears to possess strong psychic abilities.

The moment I was presented to her as “Annatar, Lord of Gifts, a Wise Wizard of the South,” she attempted to penetrate my mind. I cut her off, quite easily — but this aroused her suspicions. While I chatted with her inane husband, she probed me with telepathic questions.

“Who are you? Do you come from the Uttermost West?”

“Open your mind to me. Why do you conceal your fëa?”

“I sense evil in your staff. It comes from a tree with a black heart.”

What? An evil tree? How can a tree be evil? It’s a freakin’ tree!

They let me stay for about a week. There were feasts, and a lot of singing. A lot of singing. Singing is okay, but too much singing is the reason I left the Timeless Halls of Ilúvatar in the first place. Most of them were songs from something called the Quenta Silmarillion, which is supposed to be the story of the Valar and the Maiar and the First Wars, and the Lamps and the Trees and the War of the Jewels. But boy oh boy, are they getting their facts wrong. Once I am advising these people, I will be rewriting quite a lot of this Silmarillion. Good thing I’ve been keeping this blog as a reference!

The whole time I’m at Lake Evendim, this Galadriel is undermining me. Whispering against me behind my back. Shooting me icy stares. Following me around, trying to catch me in some kind of misdeed. My mind was closed to her, but hers was like a smashed open coconut to me. All suspicion and doubt.

Oh, and the snarky comments! “Perhaps the great Lord Annatar could enlighten us on his views on the Gift of Men.” Or “Will the Lord of Gifts see fit to share with us his thoughts on the fate of those Eledhrim whose fëar refuse the summons of Mandos?” Jeez, can you please shut up?

Wait, some Elven spirits refuse to go to the Halls of Mandos? Note to self: look into this too.

Figures this chick was trained by Melian back in Doriath. I am hardly surprised.

The upshot is, Celeborn politely and regretfully kicked me out after a week, caving to his shrew of a wife. It’s okay — once I get in good with Artanáro, the High King at Lindon, this Galadriel is going to have to listen to me. Or else.

I mean — or else we’ll have a long, constructive conversation, leading to a shared consensus. The new me doesn’t make threats!

Well, I found Men. What a letdown. Seriously, I think Eru Ilúvatar has just given up trying, which is as good a reason as any to replace Him as High Lord and Master of All Creation, I think.

Carcharoth located the Men out East in Eriador, although they are apparently largely migrating West. What is the deal with the so-called Children of Ilúvatar and going West? If Eru wanted all His monkey-people to live in the West, why didn’t He create them there?

Listen, when Melkor and I created this crap planet (yes, it was us — the other Ainur just sat around and let us do all the work), everything was in perfect order. Geometrically perfect and symmetrical continents, perfectly conical mountains — everything in its logical place. Now look at what a mess Arda is. I wouldn’t trust these so-called Valar to run a Ford dealership, much less a physical universe.

Whatever a “Ford dealership” is.

And speaking of creating… look. So Eru decided to create a mortal race, the Elves, that looks like hairless albino apes. Fine, He likes primates. Then that talent-free dumbass Aulë made the Dwarves, which are just fat stunted Elves. Well sure, Aulë is as creative as the average colon, and produces the same product. No wonder his race is just a bad copy of Eru’s.

But now we see Men, and guess what? If an Elf and a Dwarf had a kid (yuck), you’d have a Man. They’re just a stockier, shorter Elf, or a taller, thinner Dwarf. Great creativity there, Eru. Good work. Whadd’ya do, design Men between kippers at breakfast?

Plus, they have these bizarre, rounded ears. And they smell like poo all the time.

Sure, primates have tool-using hands, two of them, which is very important when you need a slave race to dig holes and carve statues of you. But octopodes have eight tool-using limbs, so why not make an octo-race? I don’t want to go anywhere near the water, but I’m sure I could slap together some kind of talking land-octopus. That would be way cooler than “Men.”

Speaking of tentacles, I actually designed my own race. Didn’t I tell you? I mean, it’s just some of the lesser evil Maiar incarnated into physical bodies, but still. They’re called “Wargs,” which is a very cool name I came up with after Carcharoth suggested it. Originally, I designed them as 400′ long giant black wolves with vicious red tentacles coming from their shoulders. They were kewl.

Melkor hated the design. He went on about resource allocations and production quotas — all the shit I tell him when I point out that Project Flying Fire-Breathing Monster is 12 millennia behind schedule and 800% over budget. Then he showed me his Warg redesign — they looked like some kind of big, mangy pig-dog. What the hell?

Finally, I got Melkor to agree that Wargs would be large, talking wolves, and that the Orcs would be able to use them as mounts. I’m proud of them — but the giant, tentacled Wargs were much cooler. (Tentacles are just really useful. I should grow some.)

Anyway, I’m sending some of my spies out to the Men, to tell them the truth about the Valar and to keep them properly terrified of us. You know, the usual. Maybe we can get some slaves out of it, eliminate the rest, make coats from their skins. It’s Winter, you know.

Date: Before the Sun and Moon, but after the Count of Time beganMy Mood Is: sickened

Okay, I’m still just totally — what? Disgusted? Sickened? Perplexed? Infuriated? over this whole Melian situation. I mean, I get that we could never be together again — she sided with the Dickless Prick. It’s not like I’m still in love with her or anything.

But marrying an ELF???? Listen, I’m into some pretty sick shit, what with the burning and torturing and killing and all. In order to breed the Orcs, I’ve had to do some pretty nasty things to them. Lots of incest, for one thing. So it’s not like I’m one to judge.

Except I’m not going around shtupping any freaking Elves. I can’t even imagine being attracted to one of them. I’m a freaking Maia of the freaking Ainur of the freaking Timeless Halls, for chrissakes.

Anyway, this is not what I was going to blog about today. There are other things to worry about than Melian getting her metaphorical pooter diddled by a pointy-eared ape.

Specifically, a few years ago Carcharoth was out roaming the darkened forests when he came upon yet another race of bipedal mortals. These were significantly different from the Elves, which are tall, fair and quite tasty, with really tender white meat. The new mortals are short, squat and stringy — all nasty, foul-tasting dark meat. Perfectly good for feeding Orcs, but no good for the rest of us.

Well, obviously I just assumed these were Men. After all, Eru Ilúvatar would never lie, right? And He said there would be two races, right? Elves and Men. And since these weren’t Elves, they had to be Men. Simple deductive reasoning.

I quickly determined these “Men” would be of no value to us, and ordered the various werewolves, vampires, trolls and giants I’ve got roaming Middle Earth to kill them on sight.

Well, I was over near Eglador, wearing a pleasing Elvish shape, just spying things out. I happened to be near Menegroth, that hole in the ground that Melian and Thingol hide in, but that was just a coincidence. I was mapping out terrain in preparation for invasion, not spying on Melian and her fucktoy.

Anyway. I ran into a bunch of these so-called “Men,” who were on their way to see Thingol. I could have destroyed them with a wave of my hand, but I didn’t want to reveal myself to Melian, so I played nice and pretended to be a friendly Elf prince. And that’s when I learned — these aren’t Men!

The elves call them Naugrim, and they call themselves Khazâd. But they’re just Dwarves. Stupid, stunted Dwarves. And not Men at all!

Turns out Aulë made them, long ago. I’m not surprised — they look like Aulë’s work, shoddy and ill-designed. And did Eru punish Aulë for his presumption? Of course not. Because that would have been FAIR.

So Eru LIED about there only being two mortal races. And He punished Melkor and myself for original thinking, but not Aulë. Infallible my ass!

Now I’ve got the boys on double patrols, looking for Men. And any of Aulë’s stinking Dwarves they find are to be euthanized on sight.

Well, after my blog post yesterday, you’re probably wondering what why I’m still here in the Timeless Halls of Ilúvatar, and not down in Eä, the “World That Is” that Eru created with the help of Melkor and the rest of us Ainur.

I was ready to go at once, as was Melkor. But you know Eru; He loves to talk. Almost as much as He loves to hear His praises sung.

Turns out there are a few “Terms and Conditions” for entering the World.

First of all, anyone can go. This is bad news. It means total losers like Manwë will get to go — and just looking at that stupid fuck, I can tell he’s planning to.

Second, if you go into Eä, you become a permanent part of it — bound the the fate of the world, whatever that means. Anyway, once we go in, we can’t come out — not until the End of the World. I’m okay with that. I mean, I’m immortal, right? Even if we’re in there ten thousand centuries, that’s nothing to an immortal person.

Third, the Song of the Ainur, the music that Melkor and Eru made together along with the rest of us (and which has been the cause of so much tsuris) shall be as fate to those of us who dwell in the World. That’s okay — Melkor and I devised and sang most of the music.

And fourth, Eru is pulling rank AGAIN, and inserting something into the World that we didn’t sing — the “Children of Ilúvatar.” Apparently this is a pair of strange races he wants us to incorporate into the World.

Now, excuse me if I’m wrong, but I thought WE, the Ainur, were the Children of Ilúvatar. We’re not going to need these weird little “Elves” and “Men” running around, screwing things up. Well, whatever. As long as these “Children” know who’s in charge.